Now, if, in the general review, a cadet shows sufficient proficiency in his subject, he is not required to take the examination.  If he fails in the general review in mathematics, he must go up for a “writ,” as a written examination is termed.  And that writ is cruelly searching.  If the young man fails in the “writ,” he may be conditioned and required to make up his deficiencies in June.  If, in June, he fails to make up all deficiencies, he is dropped from the cadet corps as being below the mental standards required of a West Point graduate.

Neither Dick nor Greg stood high enough in mathematics to care to go on past January conditioned.  Both felt that, with conditions extending over to the summer, they must fail in June.

“I’d sooner have my funeral held tomorrow than drop out of West Point,” Greg stated.

Prescott, while not making that assertion, knew that it would blast his dearest hopes life if he had to go down in the academic battle.

Dodge, who was so high in mathematics that he need have little fear, was circulating a good deal among his classmates these days before Christmas.

“That hound, Prescott, made a slick dodge to drag me into his disgrace,” Dodge declared, to those whom he thought would be interest in such remarks.  “It was a clever trick! couldn’t put me in disgrace, for there is no breach of regulations in borrowing a handkerchief for a moment.  But Prescott made so much of that handkerchief business that it served his purpose and dragged him out safely before the court.”

“Do you think Prescott was really guilty of a crib?” asked one of Dodge’s hearers.

“I can’t prove it, but I know what I think,” retorted Dodge.  “His effort to draw me into the row shows what kind of a fellow he is at bottom.”

“I’d hate to think that Prescott would really be mean enough for a crib.”

“Think what you like, then, of course.  But a fellow guilty of one meanness might not stop at others.”

Dodge talked much in this vein.  Cadets are not tale-bearers, and so little or none of this talk reached Dick’s ears until Furlong came along, one day, in time to hear Dodge holding forth on his favorite subject.

Yearling Furlong halted, eyeing Cadet Dodge sternly, keenly.

“Well,” demanded Dodge, “what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know exactly,” replied Furlong, with a quizzical smile.  “I think, though, that the basic error lay in your ever having been born at all.”

Dodge tried to laugh it off as a pleasantry.  He had met Furlong once, in a fight, and had no desire to be sent to cadet hospital again with blackened eyes.

“I don’t want to mind other people’s business, Dodge,” continued Furlong coolly, “but you’re going a bit too far, it seems to me, in what you say about Prescott.  Why should you seek to blacken the character of one of our best fellows, and the president of our class?”